1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to grain moisture meter assemblies generally and particularly to portable grain moisture meters having multi-lingual digital displays for sequentially indicating in alphabetically order the full text of the particular grain being tested.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Portable grain testers utilizing the tested grain as a capacitance dielectric are known. Such devices utilize frequency attenuation through a constant volume of the dielectric as an indication of grain moisture. An example of such a device may be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,781,673 and 3,761,810. These devices in some cases even provided a limited digital display of the moisture content of the tested grain. However, these displays were limited to the moisture reading and did not provide a full text complementary digital readout of the particular grain being tested nor did they provide any biasing of the grain moisture readout to allow the operator to calibrate his device to the device that will measure the moisture content of the grain when it is transported to the elevator for sale.
Since grain moisture sensors may be used by operators in the U.S. who are not as fluent in English as in some other language such as Spanish, a multi-lingual capability to provide readouts in various languages is helpful in the U.S. and the Canadian markets and is absolutely necessary for the use of the device in international markets such as Germany, France, Norway and others. It should be remembered that the advent of the common market in Europe and the increase in immigration in the U.S. will make for a more cosmopolitan multi-lingual population worldwide and thus require multi-lingual capabilities in various operator used instruments more and more desirable.
To date, there are no known portable grain moisture sensors that provide a selectively actuated multi-lingual display of instrument functions such as an alphabetically ordered sequential list of the grain being tested by the device.
Multi-lingual electronic circuitry is known for providing concurrent multi-lingual capability to multiple users of a distributed process control system. Examples of such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,615,002 and 4,566,078. Also language pronunciation displays for various languages are known such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,623,682. However, none of these patents describe any sequentially actuated alphabetically ordered test material such as grain in a portable moisture sensor of the type needed in the present marketplace.
In view of the foregoing it will be seen that no known portable grain measuring devices or any other devices provided a sequential full text multi-lingual digital display of the grain being tested as was needed in the marketplace.